With the development of Internet technology, an increasing number of people use the Internet for communication. Instant messaging (IM) technology, which is developed based on Internet communication technology, receives increasing attention and recognition from the public due to characteristics such as real-time, convenience and promptness. A user can exchange instant messages with different contacts using an IM client.
Two users can exchange instant messages through an instant chat. If multiple users want to conduct instant messaging at the same time, a messaging group needs to be formed. For example, a user A, a user B and a user C form a messaging group if the user A, the user B and the user C want to conduct a multi-end chat through respective IM clients. Each instant message sent by a user to the messaging group can be received by other users in the messaging group.
Two problems exist in existing instant messaging technology:
(1) Regardless of instant messaging between two users through an instant chat or instant messaging among multiple users through a messaging group, a user who does not belong to that instant chat or instant group cannot know whether instant messages therein mention any content with which he/she is concerned, e.g., referencing his/her name, referencing a user name of a user with whom he/she is concerned, or referencing a keyword with which he/she is concerned (for instance, referencing a concerned keyword “soccer”).
(2) Regardless of instant messaging between two users through an instant chat or instant messaging among multiple users through a messaging group, the number of instant messages exchanged between users may be numerous and cluttered. A user who receives the instant messages may find it difficult to accurately find content with which he/she is concerned from these numerous and cluttered instant messages that are received. If the user who receives the instant messages wants to find the content with which he/she is concerned, the user needs to search the received instant messages one by one. This not only wastes a lot of the user's processing time, but also has a relatively low search efficiency and flexibility. Furthermore, if a large number of users search chat records in an instant messaging server at the same time or a certain user repeatedly searches content with which he/she is concerned in chat records of users who have communicated with the user, an access load of the instant messaging server is increased and a processing capability of the instant messaging server is decreased.
In short, in existing technologies, neither a user who receives an instant message nor a user who does not receive the instant message (i.e., a user who does not belong to an instant chat or an instant group) can accurately and quickly determine whether the instant message references content with which he/she is concerned without increasing an access load of an instant messaging server.